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A review by am_paro
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez
1.0
Based on the assumption that there are exactly two genders and two sexes, this book provides overwhelming evidence for the ways in which nearly every society on earth privileges men (the default) over women (the other).
The book touches lightly on other factors that harm women as well, including racial minority status and socioeconomic status. But a glaring omission--indeed, it is erasure--is any discussion of transgender women and men, as well as nonbinary/other genders, intersex people, and any other person who is not a "man," that is, a cis man. While it's true that societies largely do operate on a gender/sex binary, the oppression that this results in does not only fall on cis women. I am dismayed that a book like this would be published in 2019 without a full discussion of intersectionality.
This is a problem with the book's premise, that improving the availability of data on women's experiences can lead to better policy and thereby more equitable outcomes. While that's true in some of the examples cited by the author, is the lack of data really the big problem? I fear that even if we were swimming in data showing that "the other" were disadvantaged in every way, policy would not change so long as "the default" were in charge, because the source of the unwillingness to collect and use the data in the first place is misogyny, transphobia, etc. Why bother to make women's lives better if you hate women? if you hate anyone who is not a "man"--someone who presents as male and performs sufficient masculinity? It's easy to throw out the rational comfort of data with this irrational attitude.
The book touches lightly on other factors that harm women as well, including racial minority status and socioeconomic status. But a glaring omission--indeed, it is erasure--is any discussion of transgender women and men, as well as nonbinary/other genders, intersex people, and any other person who is not a "man," that is, a cis man. While it's true that societies largely do operate on a gender/sex binary, the oppression that this results in does not only fall on cis women. I am dismayed that a book like this would be published in 2019 without a full discussion of intersectionality.
This is a problem with the book's premise, that improving the availability of data on women's experiences can lead to better policy and thereby more equitable outcomes. While that's true in some of the examples cited by the author, is the lack of data really the big problem? I fear that even if we were swimming in data showing that "the other" were disadvantaged in every way, policy would not change so long as "the default" were in charge, because the source of the unwillingness to collect and use the data in the first place is misogyny, transphobia, etc. Why bother to make women's lives better if you hate women? if you hate anyone who is not a "man"--someone who presents as male and performs sufficient masculinity? It's easy to throw out the rational comfort of data with this irrational attitude.